Global warming set to pass 2C threshold in 2050: report

Climate change is faster than anticipated.

Earth is on track to sail past the two degree Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold for dangerous global warming by 2050, seven of the world's top climate scientists warned Thursday.

"Climate change is happening now, and much faster than anticipated," said Sir Robert Watson, former head of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), the body charged with distilling climate science for policy makers.

Since 1990, devastating weather-related events including floods, drought, more intense storms, heat waves and wild fires, due to climate change have doubled in number, Watson and the other scientists said in a report.

"Without additional efforts by all major emitters (of greenhouse gases), the 2C target could be reached even sooner," he told journalists in a phone briefing.

The planet has already heated up 1.0 C (1.8 F) above the pre-industrial benchmark, and could see its first year at 1.5 C within a decade, scientists reported at a conference in Oxford last week.

The Paris Agreement, inked by 195 nations in December, set an even more ambitious target, vowing to cap warming at "well under" 2C, and even 1.5C if possible.

The pact will likely enter into force by the end of year, record speed for an international treaty.